Billings, Days four, three, two and one

I have wanted to visit my sister Mary for a while now, but kept finding excuses to put it off.  Then a friend wanted a "Pony Express" delivery for three sewing machines from Missoula to Wisconsin.   So Christy, Mary's daughter, brought the machines to Billings and I came to Billings to visit Mary and pick up the sewing machines for delivery to the River Rat Toga in September.

Mary knows I collect old sewing machines and she wanted a machine to sew with.  Since she hasn't moved much of her furniture to the little house in Billings I used that as an excuse.  This little Singer Model 66, previously electric but now a hand crank in a cute little desk, was delivered to Mary.  

Before delivery I cleaned and oiled and greased the machine.  It is not perfectly clean because I am nervous about taking apart things like the Bobbin Winder,  but much of it is shiny and good looking and all the insides are clean and in good order.

Mary took me to a beautiful quilt store in Billings called Fiberworks, her excuse being that she needed some fabric to play on her machine with.  (I needed no excuse) Oh such fun fabrics. I managed to find a few things to bring home.  Mary bought two fat 1/8ths and made this little bag in just a few minutes.  She is all ready to put a ribbon through the top to close it with, once she finds a ribbon, and she still has another 1/8th to play with.

Monday evening we went to the opening game of the 2010 season of the Billings Mustangs.  They have a new ballpark called Dehler Park which is very nice.  They won 11 to 4 over the Great Falls team and we had lots of fun and two lemonades each.  We didn't have any caramel apples.    Such restraint!

This is the fancy new scoreboard showing a picture of the Western Heritage Center which is the original library here in Billings.

After breakfast at Stella's on Monday we went for a walk in a Riverside Park which is affiliated with the Audubon Society here in Billings.  This park has a nice walk along a small river that flows into the Yellowstone River.  This is the Yellowstone River at that point.  Here is proof that we were there.  Jim is standing quite close to the edge isn't he?    The river was running quite fast, probably because of the rain and hail (and tornado) that we had yesterday.

After the storm on Sunday, the clouds cleared away and Mary took me up on the 'Rims' to get a look at the wild flowers and to see this view of mountains hovering over the city.  Cool eh?

Here is the new moon over the city, and then a picture of Mary taking a picture of a Yucca plant.  Evidently this was a highlight of the walk for her.  She has wanted to see a blooming Yucca for some time.   There were some blooms that had been hailed off the plants and we touched them.  They are very strange and waxy feeling.  You could say they feel Yucky.

This last picture was taken on the way into Billings on Saturday.  These horses were up on the range overlooking the freeway.  I was way far away and had to zoom this as far as I could so you could get a glimpse of the horses.  They looked so neat and western up there.

This last morning our plans are to go to the Dude Rancher for Breakfast and then visit Mary at her Library before leaving for home.

It has been a very nice visit and next time I am staying longer.

Thanks Mary for a great time!

TOGA madness

Well Mary I finally got my computer working! So I can put up the videos I took at the River Rat TOGA in Lake City MN a couple of weeks ago. 

I hope, hope, hope this is the video of Annie doing free hand feathers on a treadle machine. Wow is she good at it.
This is the third time I tried to get the 3 minute video up. I think I finally made it. I would watch these with the sound off. There is a lot of gossip going on in the background and it is distracting from the work. Although not for Annie! She just keeps on treadling.

YES!!
Love,
Nancy

TOGA TOGA TOGA

Hi there Mary,

That is the way you start your message calling all Treadle 'onions' from the land of Treadle On to a gathering.

TreadleOnGAthering is how I assume the name TOGA got started, but like many things in Treadleonia it is a mystery to me.

One thing that often happens, according to Cindy Peters of Lake City, MN is a TOGA entertainment which involves ambulances or some sort of official intervention. This time is was a car starting on fire right in front of Cindy's storefront and then (thank goodness) it continued through the intersection until a valiant citizen of Lake City ran into the street and, waving her arms, stopped the car and dragged the confused and protesting driver to safety. Cindy is going to find out who our heroine was. She claims everyone in Lake City will know by tomorrow morning.At that point cars continued to drive around the stopped car so several of us (yes, me too, you know how bossy I am) went out into the street to stop traffic. Several people were quite indignant that they couldn't drive past the burning car and had to go AROUND THE BLOCK!

Once the 2 police cars, and then the fire department got there they effectively blocked the street and we could go back to gawking. I got a few photo's and thought you would all like to see the fire department in action. They had a little trouble getting the hood off and when they finally did we all cheered.

This happened on Sunday morning so after this excitement we went up to the church and watched Damascus Annie (Annie Kusilek) do some free motion quilting on her Singer Treadle. I think it is a 15/90 Singer but I am not sure. Hopefully someone will confirm or correct me.

I was fascinated by her 'feathers'. All I can say is WOW WOW WOW.

After that I got out my new Singer 99 to check it over and do a little practice sewing on it. It was pulling the fabric a little and I was wondering about the pressure on the presser foot, so I called Bill Holman over and he looked at the machine. He noticed the tension knob was incorrectly assembled so he took it off and fixed it and put it back. What a guy. He is what a Treadlonian calls a OSMG (Old Sewing Machine Guy) They are national treasures in the sewing machine world and I can certainly agree about Bill. I am sure he had forgotten more stuff about sewing machines than all the rest of us put together knew.

I tried to post a video of Annie treadling the feather quilting but the download died. I will show you when I get home on Monday.

Love,

Nancy